Indurain cameo appearance fails to ease pain in Spain on a bad day for the Basques

The drums outside the Bar Luis Churreria in the main street of Vielha, at the foot of yesterday's final climb, were beating out "We will rock you" but the atmosphere as the Tour visited Spain was less rock festival than village fete, in marked contrast to the usual trend that when the world's greatest stage race goes abroad, the crowds multiply.

Most of the decisive events in the first two weeks of this Tour have occurred on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees - yesterday's final climb and the police blood-doping inquiry, Operation Puerto, which blew the race apart before it had even begun - but by a curious twist the Tour's first visit to these parts for 32 years had a distinctly low-key feel to it.

Inside the bar, half a dozen listless locals were watching it live on television with a distinct lack of interest. Asked where all the people were, one pointed a thumb upwards to indicate "on the mountain". Not too many of them, it transpired. Usually the final climb of a great mountain stage is lined from valley to summit and here 150,000 people had been expected. Instead there were long stretches on the ascent to Pla-de-Beret which only lacked tumbleweed blowing across the road to complete a picture of desolation.

There were various explanations offered, and the fall-out from Operation Puerto was only one. There is plenty of local pride here, but little of it is focussed on two wheels. The Val-d'Aran, which hosted yesterday's finish, is cut off from both the Aragon and Catalunya regions by high mountains, and is an autonomous area within a politically autonomous province, with its own distinctive identity as the last bastion of the Occitan language. That tells its own story: this is a hard place to get to, and not a lot of people live here.

There was another possible explanation for the relatively low turn-out, however, underlined by the large, curly-haired figure of Miguel Indurain, who made his annual visit to the Tour yesterday and appeared on French TV, hindered only by the fact that, as he always insisted during his five Tour wins - with impeccable politeness - he does not speak in French.

"Big Mig" is heavier-jowled now and his cheeks have filled out since his last appearance in anger at the Tour in 1996, but the curls have barely a hint of grey and he remains as platitudinously polite as in his heyday. His tip for the stage win, Mickael Rasmussen, was wildly inaccurate, but significantly his presence served as a reminder of how rapidly Spanish cycling has declined since his glory days.

In this Tour the best Spaniards, Alejandro Valverde and Francisco Mancebo, were home within the first few days, Valverde through a crash, Mancebo because of his implication in Operation Puerto. The country's biggest team, Liberty Seguros, has lost its sponsor and was banned from the Tour.

Spain's best stage racer, Roberto Heras, is currently banned after testing positive for erythropoietin after winning last year's Vuelta and up to 50 others face disciplinary action after being named as part of Operation Puerto. Increasingly, Spain's best cyclists are being exported: this year's Spanish stage winner, Oscar Freire, now rides for the Dutch Rabobank team.

The Catalans did not turn out in force, but halfway up the final climb the Tour's most passionate supporters, the Basques, appeared, as they always do in the Pyrenees, having travelled half the length of the mountain range to cheer on Euskaltel.

Thousands of balloons in the team's orange colours were suspended from the crowd barriers, the roadsides were a sea of orange T-shirts and hundreds of red, green and white Ikurrina flags were brandished in the riders' faces, as always.

The Basques, however, are having a hellish Tour. The team's leader, Iban Mayo, was the first rider dropped as the peloton tackled the Col du Tourmalet, unable to hold on though the pace was merely steady. He abandoned before the race even got to his native Spain, with his rotten day ending in a fine for swearing at the cameras as they lingered over his pain.

To rub salt in the wounds, the only Spaniard who now figures in the overall standings is Carlos Sastre from Avila in central Spain. The other Spaniard in the day's action, David de la Fuente - the new King of the Mountains to boot - is from Cantabria, along the coast from the Basque Country. And the only remotely Basque aspect to the Russian stage winner Denis Menchov was that he wore orange - for the Dutch Rabobank team.